


One Two Zero

by DragonBandit



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Discussions of death, Fear of Death, Gen, Growing Old Together, HC Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 21:57:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: They were not meant to grow old.





	One Two Zero

**Author's Note:**

> This fulfills my Bingo square for loss of limb / amputation / mutilation. The justification being that they should be one person and aren't, and that has gotta hurt. 
> 
> This is unbetaed, and almost unedited. It was written purely as a warm up exercise. Any mistakes you find are my own.

Long past when the three suns have slipped below the horizon, SkekGra joins Urgoh in bed. He shakes, jittering with energy that has nowhere to go, pressing himself as close to Urgoh as he can. Together they are a tangle of twelve limbs, sharp joints, and sagging skin. 

“Why do I ache?” SkekGra whines. “Every inch of my body hurts. What have you been doing?” 

Urgoh hums, laboriously turning his head to regard his counterpart. “We have… grown… old…” he intones. 

SkekGra makes an affronted sound, the spines on the back of his neck quivering. “Why did we go and do that? We don’t have time to be old!”

“It… Was not…”

“Yes, get on with it.”

“A…”

“Just get the words out, Urgoh!”

“...Choice.” Urgoh sighs. 

SkekGra wriggles madly in the sheets. Soon he will get out of bed entirely, giving up on sleep to tinker with bones and scraps of fabric and all the other sundry items he picks up here and there while Urgoh contemplates the vastness of the ripples in causality. 

“You infuriate me.” He says. 

“Or perhaps… it is you… who infuriates… me…”

“You do this on purpose,” SkekGra says. “You do! And I don’t infuriate you, you’re too patient to be infuriated by anyone!”

Urgoh regards him in silence. 

SkekGra is puffed up, his withered wings high over his head. Once they had been beautiful, gossamer things that had lifted SkekGra high into the clouds. That had been centuries of trine ago. Now he is a faded, ancient thing, held together by sinew and skin, and a drive that won’t ever let him rest. 

SkekGra deflates, and huddles in close to Urgoh once again. An apology perhaps, for losing his temper. It is not anyone’s fault that when they split SkekGra got all the impulsivity, while Urgoh got all of the patience. 

There is a reason why the other Skeksis and UrRu do not live together as UrGoh and SkekGra do. 

It is hard to live with a dark mirror of yourself, and know that you are lacking pieces without wanting to break the mirror in two. 

“I had the dream again,” SkekGra murmurs. “I dreamed of being one who became two who became nothing at all.” 

“Or perhaps… we were nothing…”

SkekGra puts his hands over UrGoh’s snout. He says, loudly, “No we were one who became two and we will become nothing! We will turn to dust and dirt and one day no one will even speak of our names!”

“They don’t… speak of our name… now…” UrGoh points out. 

“That is beside the point.” Contrite again, “Do you remember? Being one? Being whole?” 

“I remember.”

“I miss it.” 

They are silent. UrGoh wonders if SkekGra has managed to fall asleep, and he puts his heavy head carefully over SkekGra’s beak. His eyes close, breathing resolving into the first stage of sleep. 

“UrGoh?” SkekGra says. 

“Hmmm.”

“I didn’t mean to grow old.” 

“Neither… Did I…”

“I don’t want to die.” 

“All things… return to the song of Thra…”

“Not us. Not me. Where do we go? We can’t die, we can’t become nothing.”

“Not even we can... hope to be eternal, Skekgra.”

“Why not?” 

“Because... we are two... who should be... one.” 

“We didn’t mean to become two.” 

“No…” UrGoh sighs. “We did not.”

Centuries of trine ago, they became this way, and centuries of trine before that they were whole but too broken to belong home. They were eternal, ever waiting for the stars to call them home, ever searching for ways to go back to where they belonged. They were not meant to die.

Skeksis, and UrRu, still searching, still broken. 

Still waiting and searching to be whole. 

But now with each passing trine they face a new addition to the dance. They are no longer eternal. 

And they are soon to be out of time. 

**Author's Note:**

> [H/C Bingo Card](https://coinmanatee.dreamwidth.org/1614.html#cutid1)
> 
> There's nothing to support it in the movies, but I'd always thought that the UrSkeks were immortal beings. At the very least they obviously must live for a very, very long time considering how long they as UrSkeks were on Thra for, and how long they lasted as Skeksis and UrRu for after that.


End file.
